If you have never tracked time before, you may be surprised to hear that many businesses consider it a staple to their organization. Why?

Time tracking is key to a productive, insightful workflow that keeps your business growing and improving. It allows businesses to fully understand how everyone in their organization—from managers to team members—spend their time on projects or assigned tasks. Time tracking is especially useful for businesses that regularly work with consultants, bill clients by the hour, or have remote, hybrid work arrangements.

RTC Tracking is a consultant management time tracking software tool that allows businesses full transparency to the work being performed by a consultant or off-site employees. The RTC Software tracks all aspects of work performance, such as:

• Allowing instant approvals & acceptance of work
• Providing automatic billing
• Maintaining historical work performance records

RTC provides great added value for both the company and its consultants. Read on to learn the major advantages of time tracking with RTC!

Accountability & Transparency

Incorporating time tracking into your business automatically introduces much-needed accountability and transparency for all parties involved. It offers clear insights into the jobs being completed, their duration, and costs to ensure honesty can be maintained and that there are no surprises on either side.

It is important for consultants and businesses that bill clients hourly to accurately track their time instead of guessing it. Tracking your time ensures that you neither sell yourself short by underestimating time nor overcharge clients, which could damage the relationship. Effective time tracking software prevents businesses and consultants from manipulating times, padding numbers, and overcharging—holding all parties accountable and answerable to potential dishonesty.

Remote Monitoring & Project Management

If you work with independent contractors or manage a remote team, then you know it can be difficult to keep track of what’s going on and who is doing what. With so many moving parts in your business, it can become nearly impossible to establish what is being worked on by whom, what results have been achieved, and not to mention, what the costs will be at the end.

Having no idea what is being done by employees or what is getting charged by consultants leaves your business in the dark and at risk of losing money. And if as a business owner, you can’t say whether your consultants are achieving the desired results based on the time spent on a project, then you may also be at risk of paying for deliverables that don’t pass muster.

To avoid this, businesses need time tracking software to keep track of the status of projects in real-time, ascertain who is working on which tasks, and analyze if the time spent on the work meets their budgetary requirements and quality standards.

Improved Productivity & Profitability

Time tracking allows business owners to gain much-needed insight into how consultants or employees spend their time. Without time tracking, many businesses do not realize that some of their projects are unprofitable.

For example, some of the most time-consuming tasks aren’t necessarily the most profitable or valuable to a business. And when businesses can clearly see how much time it takes to complete a task, they can begin to reflect if that time was well-spent.

When businesses can clearly see time spent on certain tasks, then they can assess the profitability of those tasks, quickly spot unprofitable activities, and prioritize their consultant’s time to more worthwhile assignments.

Better Business Protection

If you are a client services business, then you know clients will sometimes ask for detailed explanations of why certain tasks took as long as they did. With the right time tracking tools, you can create a report and easily show them how long great work takes and why. As a consultant or business owner, this data is indispensable to help clients understand that the time they are paying for is put to good use.

Time tracking data also protects businesses from unreasonable client expectations and from dishonest clients that claim they never approved the work. With RTC’s time tracking software, businesses can further protect and empower their organization by:

• Providing proof that each task was accepted and approved
• Providing proof they completed assigned work
• Providing detailed reports about what was completed during time logged
• Creating better estimates for future projects by analyzing the time it takes to finish projects.
• Measuring the profitability of a project given time spent on it

Want to Test Drive RTC Time Tracking?

Time is one of the most valuable resources of every business. Is your business using its time right? RTC Tracking will help your business optimize your time for increased cost-savings and improved performance.

If your business wants determine the value of RTC’s Time Tracking Software for yourself, sign up for a FREE 14 Day No Obligations Trial here.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming an increasingly impressive and dynamic tool, but what we have realized is this: AI will never be able to replace a marketing team.

Don’t get us wrong, AI automation software that streamlines simple tasks has its place in marketing. These automation tools reduce repetitive tasks, segment lists, and easily add personalization. Sending automatic birthday emails, abandoned cart reminders, and segmented content based on customer triggers is highly effective and a powerful way to engage your audience.

However, while AI is transforming the marketing industry, it won’t be able to replace a team of dedicated marketing professionals. Here’s why:

AI is Mimicking, Not Creating

AI is purely powered by patterns and data. The AI systems trawl large amounts of data and regurgitate existing knowledge, ideas, and images. As a result, AI is not drawing on personal intelligence, creativity, or agency but rather predetermined algorithms that mimic human outputs. When it comes to content creation, AI produces dry imitations of human work that, more often than not, ring insincere, sterile, and unoriginal.

While AI systems may be able to generate an image that is technically proficient or text that is grammatically correct, it will not be able to create compelling, original work that truly engages your audience. AI is mimicking—even, at times, outright plagiarizing—existing works, not creating original content that is actually valuable to your business.

Creativity Can’t Be Automated

At its core, marketing is driven by creativity and innovation. While AI can analyze large datasets and make recommendations based on that data, it cannot brainstorm new, innovative ideas—it can only reiterate concepts that already exist. While AI is limited to pre-determined patterns, structures, and data, humans can draw on their unique life experiences and perspectives as an endless source of creativity.

Sometimes the best marketing decisions aren’t based in facts and datasets. While analytics are helpful, marketing teams often rely on their creativity, intuition, and instincts to make decisions, which is something AI simply cannot replicate.

AI Lacks Personal Touch & Individuality

In competitive markets, ensuring your brand can stand out from the crowd is critical. Brands must focus on stamping their unique identity on all their marketing materials, whether it is through their writing style, tone, artistic techniques, or other personal touches that are singular to their brand.

AI-generated work accelerates the loss of individuality in the same way mass production replaced original craftsmanship—going from one-of-a-kind to run-of-the-mill. In other words, AI systems produce cookie-cutter content that is technically functional but uniform, indistinctive, and completely forgettable. Rather than stand out, AI-generated content will force your brand further into the shadows.

AI is Devoid of Emotion

Building relationships through content requires keen emotional intelligence and empathy. It’s the X factor that marketing will always need. When creating content, the writer, graphic designer, or other marketing professional must first understand the customer and identify with their problems and needs before producing anything. This empathetic mindset results in content that the target audience can truly relate to and engage with on a deeper level. This type of content is not only highly effective in engaging and converting, but it is also incredibly memorable since it sparks an emotional response.

AI has no lived experiences or personal perspectives to draw on and is incapable of emotionally relating to a human audience. It cannot imbue its generated content with rich, complex emotions and feelings like a human can. AI-generated content is largely sterile and devoid of real feeling. It lacks the emotional depth and authenticity that is the hallmark of human creativity. Make no mistake—your audience will be able to detect AI’s stiff, inexpressive, and imitative style.

Human Judgment is Indispensable

Successful marketing requires a deep understanding of human behavior, particularly the needs, desires, and motivations of your target audience, as well as an understanding of ethics. While AI is capable of providing data insights on your customers’ behavior, it is not capable of understanding human emotion, psychology, and ethical decision-making—all of which is essential for making principled, effective marketing choices.

For example, if an AI system draws on biased data or unfairly targets a demographic based on the data it is presented, it may produce writing, images, and other content that is harmful, problematic, and not representative of your business and brand values. The content created by AI is based on patterns and relationships it has learned from existing data, but the AI has no true understanding of the meaning or intention behind the content. As a result, with AI-generated content, the possibility of missing the mark and offending your audience is a very real, ever-present risk.

What is your business’s goal when it comes to content creation?

Do you want to entertain, educate, inform, inspire, or convert? Whatever your goal is, every business needs original content that speaks to their brand identity and engages their audience. Contact us today to discuss content development and marketing strategies that will grow your business.

In Tampa, Florida, the need for digital marketing is growing as fast as the population.

Tampa boasts one of the highest population growth rates in the United States and, with it, an ideal environment for local businesses and organizations to thrive. However, in a constantly growing environment like Tampa, there is steep competition for people’s attention among businesses of all sizes and industries.

Sun Sign Designs believes that behind each business or nonprofit in Tampa, there is the opportunity to enhance our community’s quality of life and meaningfully contribute to community identity. But to grow the diverse local businesses and important organizations that make Tampa great, we need to ensure the community can discover and enjoy them.

Consequently, Tampa digital marketing has become essential for businesses and nonprofit organizations to reach more people and connect their services with the community.

We Know Tampa

At Sun Sign Designs, we are familiar with the challenges Tampa area businesses and nonprofits face. These days it takes more than a website or social media page to expand your reach, appear before your audience, and continue growing. With effective digital marketing tools and a completely customized strategy, we help Tampa businesses and nonprofit organizations grow so they can continue to enrich our community with their services.

Can the Tampa Community Find Your Business or Nonprofit?

93% of U.S. customers rely on search engines to find local businesses and approximately 50% of Tampa adults will spend 10+ hours online weekly searching for local businesses. Is your business or organizations digitally equipped to be found by high-intent customers in the Tampa area?

In a crowded and competitive environment like Tampa, it can be easy to get lost among the competition. But if you can’t be found, your business can’t function, let alone thrive. As a result, a strong digital presence is nonnegotiable if a business or nonprofit organization wants to be found online and visited in-person.

When a business ranks high in local search results, they not only stand out in a competitive market like Tampa but they also position themselves as the more credible business to use. As a result, improved local SEO increases in-store foot traffic, targeted website traffic, and more qualified leads. It is also the first step to building the brand recognition that grows your business and sustains it long-term.

They Can Find You—But Do They Know You?

Optimizing your local SEO is only part of the equation. If your target audience can easily find you in Tampa, do your website and social media pages effectively deliver your message and offer insight into your brand identity? Once your target audience can find you, the next challenge is effectively conveying your mission, brand identity, and offerings.

What do you offer that your competition doesn’t? How do you stand out? And why should they use you instead? These questions, though unspoken, are at the heart of every encounter a person has with your brand. Answering them through digital marketing strategies, such as dedicated content development, creates a journey people are excited to embark on. Content tools, such as blogs, videos, newsletters, website design, and more effectively establish market differentiation, cement relationships, and keep customers coming back.

A strong digital presence and a strong brand identity are key components to growing long-term— digital marketing is what achieves both.

Tampa Digital Marketing Services

Sun Sign Designs is a full-service digital marketing agency dedicated to helping Tampa area businesses and nonprofit organizations thrive. With 23 years in business, we offer backed digital marketing knowledge and expertise that has consistently helped our clients grow. If your Tampa area business or nonprofit organization needs a digital marketing strategy and tools to drive positive results, contact us today!